Gardeners can come from any background, and as such have a wide variety of access to existing technology. Access to technology refers to whether an audience has a particular gadget or service, and their ability or willingness to use it as part of gardening practice.

Context:

This problem applies to individuals and communities, whenever the intent is to design interactive technology. The context varies depending on the available resources of a community, and the target demographic of design.

Discussion:

When designing for a known person or group, infrastructure and access to technology may be prescribed. Typically the context must be understood in order to know what is suitable. For example Australia has a high level of smartphone market penetration, and if targeting residential gardens, there are a likelihood of highcspeed Internet access. This would allow for the use of rich media and high levels of interconnectivity.

Communities on the other hand, such as Northey Street City Farm or Permablitz Brisbane, are limited in time and money to invest in additional technology or infrastructure. In these instances it is important to understand what technology community members already use or what infrastructure is already in place, and how is it currently used. With this understanding, the ability to repurpose, or make use of technology as part of a design, will become clear. Understanding the role technology plays in the lives of gardeners, and when they have access to technology, will result in a more inclusive design (Heitlinger et al., 2013).

Solution:

Designers need to consider: the existing infrastructure; time and money to invest in new technology; and attitudes of gardeners to different technologies, and incorporate these preferences accordingly.

Role Playing Games (RPGS) such a Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) combine storytelling with a set of rules that determine the abilities of the players and govern the interactions between the players and their environment. Essentially, RPGs allow the players to simulate imaginary scenarios and act them out. There are many elements of RPGs that are similar to elements of Civic Intelligence (CI). The development of a CI-RPG could allow roleplaying game methods to be applied for practical social justice problem solving and team building.

At the start of a game, the players in an RPG gather together to form a team which is usually called a “party.” Then they are often presented with a mission, a quest which the party will attempt to complete. Before each game, each player develops the character they will play, and determines the Skills and Attributes they will have. This is similar to the Capabilities found in Civic Intelligence.

In D&D there are six Attributes every player’s character has: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. For each character each of these Attributes will have a number value assigned to it (randomly), which measures how much of that particular Attribute the character has. Characters also have Skills, such as Concentration or Diplomacy, which correspond to certain Attributes. For example, a character with high Dexterity who has the Use Rope Skill will be very good at that Skill. The higher the corresponding Attribute the better a character will be at a particular skill.

Different characters will have different Skills and Attributes and a party must work together and combine their capabilities to be successful. A Civic Intelligence Roleplaying Game could allow a group of civic-minded people to explore ways to improve their individual operations and cooperative interactions by simulating problems and imagining potential solutions. Where traditional RPGs often serve as escapism, a CI-RPG would seek to replicate the real world and experiment in ways that might be too difficult or dangerous to perform in real life without rehearsal.

Heraclitus of Ephesus wrote that of all the things in the world, "change is the only constant." As time goes on, circumstances beyond controlling will occur and and communities will be required to adapt to new conditions, but the nature of some types of change and/or how rapidly the transition occurs isn't always our favor. There also usually exists a correlation between the speed with which change occurs and the amount of supporting systems disrupted by this change, most often to their detriment. Many factors and situations are beyond our individual control while the end-state of change is uncertain at best, so when we recognize the process of change beginning to occur we do what we can to influence the factors we actually can control. If it is decided that action is needed to mitigate change then the nature of that action must be determined first; as Kwama Nkrumah wrote "action without thought is empty, [and] thought without action is blind.” Great care must be taken to avoid unnecessary disruption, and a balance must be found between planning and execution, ensuring that appropriate steps are taken while ensuring they are taken before control of a given situation is lost.

Context:

This pattern applies to any community engaged in a decision-making process. Many issues and possible changes are not time sensitive per se, but situations can easily occur at many scales where foregone or even delayed action would be detrimental to the community. Recognizing this type of situation falls on the members of this community, but this comes with the caveats that not all situations are as time- sensitive as they may appear, and that predicted end-states and rates of transition may not reflect reality.

Discussion:

Wikipedia defines time as "the indefinite continued progression of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future." From that, the process of change begins with the past, the staging and valuing of variables, then moving through the present by interacting with one another, then unfolding into their end-state in the future. The Hopi saw time as an environment that one moved through, like riding down a river winding through a constantly changing countryside, but thus far both science and philosophy have failed to produce a working model of time.

Also much like being swept down an unknown river, change is as unpredictable as it is inevitable. This vagueness makes change a very two-sided coin, offering either hope, or, more often then not, dread, for, as H.P. Lovecraft wrote, "the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." Numerous studies have shown that the brain operates very differently under different circumstances. Hunger, sleep deprivation and sex all affect our decision-making processes differently, but few drives cause more irrational behavior then fear. When faced with change, especially at larger scales, it can be very easy to slip into an emergency mindset, to lose sight of the bigger picture in lieu a seemingly large detail, but it is usually impossible to truly say what changes would be good or bad for us just as we cannot accurately say what changes would be good or bad for others. This stems from the simple facts that "good" and "bad" are relative to the observer and that we cannot truly predict the range of consequences from our actions. Returning to the "time as a river" perspective, it is also important to note that it is not really a river, especially in terms of where it might take one. It seems to operate much more like a river delta: broad, steady, and filled with possibilities.

However, this fear of change is not without reason. Any type of change, any adjustment of variables within a given system, inherently causes disruption among adjacent entities. Most often the scale and/or intensity of this disruption is proportional to the rate at which this change occurs, i.e. c=vt, c being the change occurring to a given system, v being the disruption of adjacent/interdependent systems, and t being the duration of time this change takes to occur. For example, if one were to dig a hole, one would have many options to achieve this end. The obvious solution would be to use a shovel, causing minimal collateral damage but taking a fair amount of time, where a diesel-powered excavator would certainly be faster but would tear up a lot of other ground. Moving further towards the extremes, an archaeologist can use brushes and trowels to carefully remove dirt over months or years, but with some artfully placed explosives you can have a hole dug in seconds. The perfectly valid concern held by those worried about change is ultimately over exactly which adjacent systems will be affected.

Solution:

Changing times will require communities to change with them, but top-tier objectives, e.g. ensuring basic survival, rarely change, if ever, and what constitutes top-tier objective(s) must be identified by the community in question. That said, communities must remain flexible in their goals and be willing to adjust for new information and situations, e.g. recognizing when a lower tier objective is no longer feasible or when one method can achieve an objective better than another. Additionally, communities may often identify critical points of failure or obvious challenges within their own system(s) and develop contingencies accordingly. Intentional avoidance of "load-bearing" positions, e.g. having one person without whom the system cannot function, goes a long way towards ensuring stability, as do maintaining standardized communications, including documentation, language and data formatting, to ensure that the correct information can be found by those seeking it. Perhaps most importantly, communities must adopt the mindset of survival, of finding a balance between flexibility to go with some change and the rigidity to resist other, the willingness to "make it happen" in spite of external influence.Solution: Changing times will require communities to change with them, but top-tier objectives, e.g. ensuring basic survival, rarely change, if ever, and what constitutes top-tier objective(s) must be identified by the community in question. That said, communities must remain flexible in their goals and be willing to adjust for new information and situations, e.g. recognizing when a lower tier objective is no longer feasible or when one method can achieve an objective better than another. Additionally, communities may often identify critical points of failure or obvious challenges within their own system(s) and develop contingencies accordingly. Intentional avoidance of "load-bearing" positions, e.g. having one person without whom the system cannot function, goes a long way towards ensuring stability, as do maintaining standardized communications, including documentation, language and data formatting, to ensure that the correct information can be found by those seeking it. Perhaps most importantly, communities must adopt the mindset of survival, of finding a balance between flexibility to go with some change and the rigidity to resist other, the willingness to "make it happen" in spite of external influence.

Categories:

orientation

Categories:

organization

Themes:

Education

Themes:

Globalism and Localism

Themes:

Community Action

Themes:

Case Studies

Verbiage for pattern card:

Determining which steps to take is just as important as actually taking them, but in a time-sensitive environment, action and thought must be carefully balanced. Communities must be able to recognize where change is occuring/will occur as well as which rates of change are favorable, which are not, and which ones can be regulated or negated.

We place civic ignorance at the top of our anti-patterns collection because civic ignorance is at the core of everything that human beings do to each other that is harmful.

Civic ignorance takes different forms; it is their sum total and the perfidious interaction among the various forms that creates the Agnosphere, the ubiquitous shroud that fights civic intelligence on all fronts.

It is often quite “natural” and occurs in all of us to some degree. It is most menacing in its professional varieties, when well-resourced and self-serving elites intentionally cultivate ignorance. Historically, in the United States, the tobacco companies were the most treacherous and whose campaigns can be credited with thousands if not millions of unnecessary deaths. Currently the climate change denial campaign is the most prominent and much of the intentionally spread misinformation can be traced back to a handful of dedicated billionaires.

How it Works

Civic ignorance is assured in many ways — in general, that's what we're trying to show with our project. Fixating on certain hard-and-fast "truisms" is important. Blaming the other person is important. On an individual level, not even listening to a argument that runs counter to your own is effective since that avoids any real consideration of the issue. From an institutional level, access to information and communication should be controlled by elites. The items on the public agenda should be restricted — but it should not seem like this is the case. Finally, critics of the system should be marginalized or ignored.

Evidence

Links

All of the anti-patterns are related to this!

References

Agnotology book

Verbiage for pattern card:

Civic ignorance describes how well a group or person ignores the civic ideas, problems, or solutions of those surrounding them. The need to solve problems intelligently and taking account of all solutions is cast away in favor of the quick, the easy, and the brutal. Maybe the problem will just go away? Critics of this should be marginalized, ignored or otherwise disabled or destroyed.

Fragmented systems of service delivery that are intended to deliver health, social wellbeing, and safety are in need of course correction to address severe disparities in health and welbeing that exist. The mandate of health care reform from the Affordable Care Act is to improve care, improve population health outcomes, and lower costs. In Washington State the timeline to accomplish this is five years.

How can organizations that have traditionally delivered units of care shift towards providing access to wellness for a population which creates health equity, increases local capacity, and transforms payment and delivery systems?

Solution:

Community Health Workers are an emerging solution to this problem as shown by a case study of the Healthy Living Collaborative project in Southwest Washington and other similar projects which it is modeled after. Community Health Workers (CHWs) are trusted community members among the people they serve who can fill a variety of culturally appropriate roles. These roles increase access for the CHWs friends, family, neighbors, and peers to resources, knowledge, and skills that promote wellness. CHWs are a credible voice for the lived experience of local needs and play a critical role in translating this information across cultural, social, and organizational boundaries.

Verbiage for pattern card:

Community Health Workers are an emerging solution to this problem as shown by a case study of the Healthy Living Collaborative project in Southwest Washington and other similar projects which it is modeled after. Community Health Workers (CHWs) are trusted community members among the people they serve who can fill a variety of culturally appropriate roles. These roles increase access for the CHWs friends, family, neighbors, and peers to resources, knowledge, and skills that promote wellness. CHWs are a credible voice for the lived experience of local needs and play a critical role in translating this information across cultural, social, and organizational boundaries.

Civic Intelligence Research and Action Lab @ The Evergreen State College

Travis Bowen

CIRAL

Prateek

CIRAL

Owning the Concept in a way the Honors the originators through authenticity and personalization

Version:

1

Problem:

Some complex concepts make it hard to personalize the Pattern.

There is no Pattern Language that defines us, but there should be one that helps us define ourselves.

Context:

Pattern Language was designed to aid in identifying and approaching key elements that exist within everyday society. This allows for a better engagement on projects and ideas that affect a group of people. Starting at number one and moving forward, each pattern becomes broader in terms. These cards give reference and depth to the consistent issues faced within a community.

In the photo there is a black bear taking off a polar bear skin. If we are to all be bears, which type of bear would you choose to be? Personalization is important. One may not truly make a difference by behaving exactly like everyone else.

Discussion:

There is a song written by a group called "The Rapture." The lyrics are as such: "...gonna get myself into, wanna help me do it?"

There is a potential problem, that may arise from framing ideas within a pattern. Take the #3 - The Good Life for instance; it can be taken many different ways-- this is the point, yes, but other patterns are not as easily defined. Others may have a harder time personalizing a pattern to what it is that they are wanting to use. One may find themselves adhering too closely to the description of the cards.The idea is to use the structure of the patterns and expand them.

The patterns are inclusive, but are without us unless we put ourselves into it. First and foremost it important to assess the self before engaging a project that involves and affects others-- this should be the same when approaching Pattern Language. This will allow for better use and quality of a collective outcome.

Solution:

Creating #0 "Self and Personalization Pattern Language/card" will encompass a simplicity of ways in which the user can better adapt the existing pattern cards as well as enhance their goals.

The start of a great day is, typically, from a well rested evening. In this, so should the use of pattern language be approached from a readied mind. Here are ten questions to ask yourself as you read through the pattern language-- these will aid in optimizing the mind toward any agenda:

1. What do I believe about myself—my strengths, skills, passions, purpose?

2. What do I believe about the world – how we connect, how we communicate, how we get things done, how we operate?

3. How do I affect my world—what do I bring to the table?

4. What would I change about the world—what is needed to accomplish this task?

5. What do I already have in place to contribute?

6. What already exists to aid in this endeavor?

7. What else is needed?

8. Who else may share this vision—what can they add, what can they assist with?

Not only can cities make you sick, there are many ways that cities can actually help make people healthy.

Jennifer Wolch, dean of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, gave a presentation at the University of Washington called Lively Cities on March 1, 2010.

Solution:

We should adopt the approaches that we know have value and continue to develop, test, and disseminate new ones.

Categories:

orientation

Categories:

engagement

Categories:

social

Categories:

products

Categories:

resources

Themes:

Research for Action

Themes:

Economics

Themes:

Policy

Themes:

Community Action

Verbiage for pattern card:

Not only can cities make you sick, there are many ways that cities can actually help make people healthy. We should adopt the approaches that we know have value and continue to develop, test, and disseminate new ones.